At the end of 1998, the creative team behind so many of Cirque du Soleil's productions in the 1990s - Franco Dragone, Michel Crete and Dominique Lemieux - concluded their remarkable run of artistic and professional development, leaving the creative reins to future shows in the hands of others. And thus a new development team took up the challenge in 1999 to combine Cirque du Soleil's style with the Chinese circus tradition on a large scale.

But the development of Dralion was difficult from the start. Several months into preproduction on the new show, the French director slated for the project (Philippe Decoufflé) abandoned ship. Sylvie Galarneau, who would become artistic director of the show remembers, "He freaked out. He said the project was too big and he couldn't be comfortable working in that environment."

Faced with the challenge of mounting a new show, with a new team, in a compressed period of time, Guy Laliberté turned to an old friend: Guy Caron. Since he had left Cirque in 1988, Caron had maintained friendly relations with Laliberté. In 1992, he had even directed a show called Cirque Knie Presents Cirque du Soleil for the Swiss National Circus, produced in close collaboration with Cirque. Caron's job on Dralion wasn't easy, though. He'd have to pick up the pieces and mold them into a show to meet or exceed the exceptions laid down by the likes of Quidam, "O" and La Nouba.

Faced with a tight deadline, and with the realities of working with the Chinese, Laliberte and Caron were not able to work in the intuitive, workshoping style championed by Dragone and the company - the Chinese would not adapt easily to the free-form workshopping methods. So rather than attempt a Dragone-style show, Caron revisited the earlier style of Le Cirque Réinventé, prefering a show that's "full of energy, without gaps, that's full of strong acts."

Despite the challenges - or perhaps because of them - Laliberté and Caron fulfilled their life-long dream of working with the Chinese on a large-scale project in Dralion, which has received enthusiastic public response over its lifetime, going on to become the highest grossing touring show at its debut.